Honoring the Greats

We have failed to adequately honour our greats. And part of the reason for this failing is that often we do not know how to recognize
greatness. I was reminded of this while struggling with the annual year end chore of ridding my file cabinets of their accumulating backlog
of irrelevant papers. I was saddened to discover an unopened new year card sent by my sister in 1996. But what struck me more was the
smiling portrait of Benazir Bhutto on the postage stamp. Why was Benazir Bhutto on the postage stamp? Should all Prime Ministers be
on postage stamps?

I thought the end of the century was an appropriate time to reflect on this question and also to start honouring the great Pakistanis whom
we have neglected in the past. Here are one persons thoughts. Obviously my list is restricted to fields with which I am somewhat familiar,
my biases and my fading memory. Many people would need to cooperate to complete and agree on the Pakistani roll of honour. Then we
could make a beginning by putting all the greats on postage stamps to make them known to the rest of us.

Let me start with the easy cases where greatness is not in doubt. Such is the situation in international sports where players have to
prove their mettle in competition against the best from other countries and where independent arbiters evaluate and record their
performances. Clearly, Hanif Mohammad is a great. In my book the entire Mohammad family (Raees, Wazir, Hanif, Mushtaq, Sadiq,
Shoaib) has been a remarkable part of Pakistani cricket and deserves a postage stamp to themselves.

Staying with cricket, Fazal Mahmood is an all time great. So are Saeed Ahmad, Asif Iqbal, Abdul Qadir, Wasim Akram and, of course, Imran Khan.
All these players were recognized by Wisden, the ultimate arbiter in cricket. No matter how much I want I cannot get Rizwanuzzaman,
who was my favourite cricketer, into Wisden and recognized as a truly great. If I was the cricketing authority in Pakistan, I would be able
to make anyone I felt like captain of the team but getting him recognized by Wisden would be beyond my powers. Fortunately, we have
an objective evaluation to rely on.

Squash is another easy area. All the great Khans deserve their stamps. Hashim, Roshan, Azam, Mohibullah, Jahangir, Jansher. What a
remarkable story and how little we have made of it. I would add Qamar Zaman not because he taught me how to play in Quetta but
because the records will show that he ranked with the greats.

Things begin to get trickier once we move away from fields where international records are available as documentation. Were Omer
Kureishi and Jamshed Marker the greatest ever team of cricket commentators? Yes, if you ask me but I have no way of proving that
definitively. Perhaps a poll of all commentators would help resolve this. But certainly within Pakistan there has never been a team that
came close.

What about Gama and Bholu whom we grew up thinking of as the greatest wrestlers in the world? A friend of mine says it was all hype
although I told him I remembered someone called Zybisko being defeated by one of our champions. He said he had seen Inoki take care
of Akram within a few minutes and that there is no way of knowing how many of these bouts were fixed. I will leave this arena for others
to sort out. But I would nominate Brojan Das who was the first Asian to swim the English Channel, or so we were told. So what if he
ended a Bangladeshi; he was a Pakistani when he achieved his feat.

With music we are in a field more difficult than squash and cricket but easier than wrestling because there is a restricted international
comparator. Amanat Ali-Fateh Ali, Nazakat Ali-Salamat Ali, Roshan Ara Begum, Sharif Khan Poonchwaley were all greats. People still
treasure their old LPs not only in Pakistan but in India. We should be able to use a verifiable measure like albums sold to rank them
amongst their peers. My favourite was Asad Ali Khan but only because I was partial to the Agra gharana and because I could vicariously
imagine what the truly great Fayyaz Ali Khan must have sounded like. I don't think I would be able to get him into the list of greats
which in no way lessens the enjoyment I got from his singing. I was reminded of this part of our legacy on reading the wonderful book by
Lutfullah Khan (Sur ki Talaash).

Of course, no one can deny a place to Nur Jehan and not for fear of getting on the wrong side of Khalid Hasan. I would add Farida
Khanum, Iqbal Begum, Zahida Parveen, Abida Parween and Mehdi Hasan to the list. Anyone who was anyone wanted these artists to
perform at their functions. Such recognition cannot be purchased without the currency of rare talent. There can be no doubt whatsoever
about the place of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. A man who could fill concert halls in Japan and Germany and give the music to "Dead Man
Walking" must have been incredible.

Amongst our writers and other artists I would nominate Saadat Hasan Manto, Faiz Ahmad Faiz, Ahmad Faraz, Patras Bukhari and
Zulfikar Ghose. Zulfikar Ghose has published widely in English and the others have all been translated. Again, to be considered worthy
of serious translation is a kind of recognition that cannot be purchased without talent. Naheed Siddiqui would be on my list as would
Maharaj Kathak and perhaps Faqir Husain Saga. Zia Moheyeddin has given immense pleasure to a lot of people with his multiple talents
and his keeping our literary legacy alive through audio cassettes puts him on my list.

Amongst social workers and fighters of lost causes, Akhtar Hameed Khan, Maulana Abdul Sattar Edhi, I. A. Rahman and Asma Jahangir
would be on the list. Perhaps all have had more recognition abroad than within the country. Ardeshir Cowasjee and the late Mazhar Ali
Khan are high on my list as great locals for transmitting a belief in ideals to a whole generation.

No one can doubt the greatness of Dr. Abdus Salam whose contribution was recognized by a Nobel Prize. But things get really murky
when we enter an academic field like Economics. Every time I read the papers, I come across a statement by some "renowned"
economist. What lies behind this renown? This is an area where we do not have an idea about how to assess the standing of an
individual in his or her field. And yet, such an assessment can be made. A measure to start with is the number of significant publications.
The word "significant" is significant because Pakistani academics count newspaper articles as publications which would not hold up in
an objective evaluation relying on a test of a review by peers. Better yet is the Citation Index, which is a measure of how often other
social scientists are citing the work of an individual. This eliminates the problem posed by the proliferation of poor quality journals. One
might publish a lot, but unless one's ideas are considered good enough to be discussed and debated by an international set of peers,
their value would remain unproved.

Using such an assessment, the leading Pakistani economists would be names like Mohsin Khan, Aly Khan, Nadeem ul Haque and Anwar
Shah. All these names would be relatively unknown in Pakistan. Interestingly, virtually none of the "renowned" economists whose
pronouncements carry such weight in Pakistan would pass the very objective citation test. This is a serious matter because while an
error of judgment in recognizing an artist can cause personal pain, an error in economic judgment can inflict immense pain on the entire
population as was the case with the freezing of the foreign currency accounts. Therefore the ability to discriminate the capability of policy
advisers is extremely critical. Unfortunately, this is an area we have failed in miserably.

We need to know how to recognize ability and talent which is easier to do in some fields than in
others. The ability to discriminate can have serious implications for national welfare in fields involving policy design and implementation.
At the same time once there is a consensus on an individual's contribution he or she should be suitably honoured to communicate that
contribution to people and to generate a set of positive role models for the new generation.

Sportsmen, artists and social workers who
have excelled in their fields have earned our recognition and gratitude. Sadly, we have not given them their due.